@c -*-texinfo-*-
@c This is part of the GNU Guile Reference Manual.
@c Copyright (C)  1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
@c   Free Software Foundation, Inc.
@c See the file guile.texi for copying conditions.

@node Preface
@unnumbered Preface

This manual describes how to use Guile, GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent
Language for Extensions.  It relates particularly to Guile version
@value{VERSION}.

@menu
* Contributors::                
* Guile License::               
@end menu

@node Contributors
@unnumberedsec Contributors to this Manual

The Guile reference and tutorial manuals were written and edited
largely by Mark Galassi and Jim Blandy.  In particular, Jim wrote the
original tutorial on Guile's data representation and the C API for
accessing Guile objects.

Significant portions were contributed by Gary Houston (contributions
to POSIX system calls and networking, expect, I/O internals and
extensions, slib installation, error handling) and Tim Pierce
(sections on script interpreter triggers, alists, function tracing).

Tom Lord contributed a great deal of material with early Guile
snapshots; although most of this text has been rewritten, all of it
was important, and some of the structure remains.

Aubrey Jaffer wrote the SCM Scheme implementation and manual upon
which the Guile program and manual are based.  Some portions of the
SCM and SLIB manuals have been included here verbatim.

Since Guile 1.4, Neil Jerram has been maintaining and improving the
reference manual.  Among other contributions, he wrote the Basic
Ideas chapter, developed the tools for keeping the manual in sync
with snarfed libguile docstrings, and reorganized the structure so as
to accommodate docstrings for all Guile's primitives.

Martin Grabmueller has made substantial contributions throughout the
reference manual in preparation for the Guile 1.6 release, including
filling out a lot of the documentation of Scheme data types, control
mechanisms and procedures.  In addition, he wrote the documentation
for Guile's SRFI modules and modules associated with the Guile REPL.

The chapter on GOOPS was written by Christian Lynbech, Mikael
Djurfeldt and Neil Jerram.

@node Guile License
@unnumberedsec The Guile License
@cindex copying
@cindex GPL
@cindex LGPL
@cindex license

Guile is Free Software.  Guile is copyrighted, not public domain, and
there are restrictions on its distribution or redistribution, but
these restrictions are designed to permit everything a cooperating
person would want to do.

@itemize @bullet
@item
The Guile library (libguile) and supporting files are published under
the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 or later.
See the files @file{COPYING.LESSER} and @file{COPYING}.

@item
The Guile readline module is published under the terms of the GNU
General Public License version 3 or later.  See the file @file{COPYING}.

@item
The manual you're now reading is published under the terms of the GNU
Free Documentation License (@pxref{GNU Free Documentation License}).
@end itemize

C code linking to the Guile library is subject to terms of that
library.  Basically such code may be published on any terms, provided
users can re-link against a new or modified version of Guile.

C code linking to the Guile readline module is subject to the terms of
that module.  Basically such code must be published on Free terms.

Scheme level code written to be run by Guile (but not derived from
Guile itself) is not restricted in any way, and may be published on any
terms.  We encourage authors to publish on Free terms.

You must be aware there is no warranty whatsoever for Guile.  This is
described in full in the licenses.


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